The nightmare returns: Chilling echoes of Hiroshima's destruction in images from the aftermath of tsunami

And the pictures of the devastation following Friday's tsunami bear a chilling resemblance to shots taken after the country's worst human catastrophe - the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Some 70,000 Japanese died instantly when the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 1945, and three days later another 75,000 died when a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

1945 left and 2011 right: Shinto shrines represent the spiritual connection between the people and the land. The traditional Toril entrance gates to these shrines were among the few structures to survive in Hiroshima 66 years ago and in the village of Otsuchi last Friday

Inferno: A fire engine in the ruins of Hiroshima, left. The atomic firestorm could not be quenched. Right one of the emergency vehicles called out to fight gas fires in Minamisoma

At least 10,000 victims are thought to have died when the tsunami hit north east Japan on Friday - but the death toll could rise much higher.

And dozens of coastal towns have been flattened in much the same way as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were wiped out by the nuclear bombs.

Writing for the Daily Mail, reporter Alex Thompson told how he had seen the effects of 20 wars, but he had never seen anything on the scale of the destruction in Minami Sanriku.

'The scene is reminiscent of the photographs of Nagasaki or Hiroshima after the A bombs were dropped during the Second World War. The occasional concrete structure has survived, but nothing else,' he said.

Wiped out: The vast of expanse of broken homes in Minami Sinraku is almost hard to distinguish from the scene in Hiroshima decades earlier

A life in ruins: An elderly survivor in 1945 searches the rubble of her Hiroshima home, left, and right, the wooden homes were smashed into matchwood in Rikuzentakata

His words echo those of Japanese Prime
Minister Naoto Khan, who said as the devastation emerged at the weekend:
'The current situation of the earthquake, tsunami and the nuclear
plants is in a way the most severe crisis in the past 65 years since the Second
World War.

'Whether we Japanese can overcome this crisis depends on each of us.

'I strongly believe that we can get over this great earthquake and tsunami by joining together.'

Swept away: Ten thousand people are still missing after Minamisanriku was obliterated, left. Right: Shattered remnant: Seventy thousand died in 1945 when the A-bomb vaporised Hiroshima

Taking stock: A family looks at the neighbourhood where their home used to stand in Minamisoma, left. A Japanese man is pictured in Nagasaki in 1945, right

Waste
land: a lone man walks across the plain where Minami Sanriku used to
stand, where almost no sign of the previous settlement is left

Ruins: Hiroshima was one of Japan's most industrialised cities before the nuclear bomb was dropped. American generals had avoided bombing it before the nuclear bomb so that the effects of the nuclear blast could be fully measured

Totally destroyed: The town of Minamisanriku town, Miyagi, where 10,000 people are missing, left, and Hiroshima in 1945, right